AMD has announced an official price cut for the Radeon R9 280, pulling it down from $279 to $249.

In case you missed it earlier, the AMD Radeon R9 280 was announced back in March and it is pretty much a rebrand of the Radeon HD 7950. It is based on AMD's 28nm Tahiti GPU, packs 1792 Stream Processors, 112 TMUs and 32 ROPs, 3GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 384-bit memory interface and works at 827MHz base GPU and 933MHz GPU Boost clocks while memory is set at 5000MHz, at least when it comes to those that follow AMD's reference design.

While it officially launched with a $279 price tag, AMD has now dropped it by $30, putting it smack in the middle between the R9 280X, priced at US $299 and the R9 270X, priced at US $199. This price also puts the R9 280 in direct competition with Nvidia's GTX 760 graphics card, which also sells for $249.

Asus has announced yet another graphics card under its Republic of Gamers brand, the GTX 760 based Asus ROG GTX 760 Striker graphics card with 4GB of GDDR5 memory. To be available in Standard and Platinum versions, the ROG GTX 760 Striker is and will probably be the fastest GTX 760 on the market and features Asus' own new DirectCU II cooler, CoolTech fan, DIGI+ VRM as well a rather impressive factory overclock.

According to Asus, the new Republic of Gamers GTX 760 Striker Platinum graphics cards features cherry-picked GPUs ensuring that they can handle a rather impressive factory-overclock of 1085MHz for the base GPU and 1150MHz for the GPU Boost clock. The new DirectCU II cooler with two fans, one of which is CoolTech fan, should ensure that there is no throttling in any scenario. The Standard version of the ROG GTX 760 ended up at 980MHz base and 1033MHz GPU Boost clocks.

Based on Nvidia 28nm Kepler GK104 GPU, both versions of the ROG GTX 760 Striker pack 1152 CUDA cores, 96 TMUs and 32 ROPs, but unlike most GTX 760 on the market, also come with 4GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6008MHz on both versions of the ROG GTX Striker graphics card.

In order to sweeten the deal, the ROG GTX 760 Striker graphics card also features the new ROG LED logo on top of the cooler which also doubles as the load indicator and should change shade depending on the actual load on the GPU. The Asus ROG GTX 760 Striker also comes with Asus' own GPU Tweak overclocking utility as well as the GPU Tweak Streaming tool.

According to Asus, the new ROG GTX 760 Striker should be available in retail/e-tail as of this month but it did not shed any light on the actual price of the new premium GTX 760.

ASUS has launched a new member of the Mars lineup, under its Republic of Gamers brand and line of premium products, the ASUS ROG Mars 760. Although it is not the Mars everyone expected, the new ROG Mars 760 still packs enough punch to be faster than the mighty Nvidia GTX Titan.

Based on two GK 104 GPUs with 1152 CUDA cores per GPU for a total of 2304, the new ROG Mars 760 is basically an GTX 760 SLI setup done on a single PCB. These specifications, paired up with the fact that both GPUs are clocked at 1006MHz base and 1072MHz Boost GPU clocks, 4GB of GDDR5 memory (2GB per GPU) clocked at 6000MHz and dual 256-bit memory interface, were enough to make it faster than the GTX Titan and in some cases even faster than the GTX 780 Ti. The GPUs are interconnected via the PLX PEX8747 PCI-Express 3.0 bridge.

With an impressive 12-phase DIGI+ VRM, Super Allow Power components and (Nichicon GT-series) Black Metallic Caps, the new ROG Mars 760 will also offer good stability as well as an enhanced OC potential. The new ROG Mars 760 is paired up with a dual-slot DirectCU II cooler with two separate heatsinks (one for each GPU), two fans which should keep it well cooled even under load and glowing MARS LED logo.

It supports SLI, in case you want to run a pair for Quad-SLI configuration, has two dual-link DVI-I outputs, one dual-link DVI-D output, one Mini DisplayPort output and HDMI output via dongle.

According to ASUS, and unlike previous ROG Mars products, the Mars 760 will not be a limited run 1000-pieces piece of hardware, but rather a normal graphics card aiming to bring Mars down to a much reasonable levels when it comes to price and affordability. Unfortunately, ASUS still did not release any details regarding the actual price or the availability date.

In addition to a standard Geforce GTX 760 with a blower-style cooler and reference clocks, Gainward has also launched the new Geforce GTX 760 Phantom graphics card.

Based on the 28nm GK104 GPU with 1152 CUDA cores and Nvidia GPU Boost 2.0 technology, the new Geforce GTX 760 Phantom works at 1072MHz base and 1137MHz Boost clock. The Gainward GTX 760 Phantom still comes with 2GB of GDDR5 memory that has been overclocked to 3100MHz (6200MHz effective) and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface.

The GTX 760 Phantom is paired up with new Gainward Phantom dual-fan cooler which has removable fans and that should provide better cooling performance while maintaining or even lowering the noise level when compared to the reference cooler.

As most other Nvidia AIB partners, EVGA also launched a couple of new graphics cards based on the Nvidia Geforce GTX 760 design. To be precise, EVGA actually launched and announced a total of eight different cards, three with ACX cooler and five with the standard blower-style cooler.

The ACX cooled lineup will include the Geforce GTX w/ ACX cooling, GTX 760 Superclocked w/ ACX cooling and the GTX 760 4GB FTW w/ ACX cooling that will launch at a later date. The blower style cooled cards include two standard GTX 760 cards with reference and EVGA blower coolers, GTX 760 4GB one as well as FTW and Superclocked graphics cards.

While most of them are left at reference 980MHz base and 1033MHz Boost GPU clocks as well as 6008MHz for 2GB or 4GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 256-bit memory interface, the Superclocked and the FTW version feature a decent factory overclock. The Superclocked version works at 1072MHz base and 1137MHz Boost GPU clocks while memory was left at reference 6008MHz. The FTW version on the other hand will be available with 4GB of memory and works at 1085MHz base and 1150MHz Boost GPU clocks.

Nvidia has officially launched its latest Geforce 700 series graphics card, the GTX 760. Aimed to replace the Geforce GTX 660 Ti, the Geforce GTX 760 is based on the GK104 GPU with 1152 CUDA cores. It packs 2GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 256-bit memory interface and should put a lot of pressure on AMD and its Radeon HD 7950.

As noted, the Geforce GTX 760 is pretty much based on the same GPU seen behind the Geforce GTX 770 as well as some earlier GTX 600 series graphics cards. The GK104 GPU features 1152 CUDA cores, 96 TMUs and 32 ROPs. The reference design will work at 980MHz base and 1033MHz GPU Boost clocks and feature 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6.0GHz and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface. It also features Nvidia GPU Boost 2.0 which should provide better and more sustained GPU Boost clock states.

The reference version will feature 2GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 256-bit memory interface, but partners are given a green light from day one to come up with its own version including the 4GB equipped versions so we'll see a lot of variations on the market.

The reference cooler is a bit of a let down considering that it could be a bit less noisy and pack a bit more punch since the GPU easily exceeds the 80°C mark during gaming but as partners have been given a green light from Nvidia to do their own custom designs, we guess that those with reference cooler could be quite rare.

Priced at US $249.99 for the reference version, the new GTX 760 quite successfuly replaces the GTX 660 Ti as it ends up at anywhere between 5-10 percent faster but also ends up US $30 cheaper. It will also put a lot of pressure on AMD's Radeon HD 7950 graphics cards and we could see a price drop from AMD pretty soon, at least if they decide that they need to counter it.

Traditionally the northern hemisphere spends the months between late June and September on vacation, and the Geforce GTX 760, the card set to launch tomorrow, should be the last Nvidia card in 700-series launching for this period.

At this time, there is indication that there will be new cards coming, as Nvidia lets the Geforce GT 660, 650 Ti boost, 650 Ti and vanilla 650 coexist with the 700 series. Since they are all based on same or similar chips, it doesn’t come as a surprise. vidia doesn’t see a value in rebranding the 650 series of cards to 750, at least not at this time.

Since graphics companies usually react to competing products in no time, Nvidia might consider strengthening its position in case AMD hits the market with desktop Radeon HD 8000 products and makes Nvidia run for its money. However, the real fun starts next year when Nvidia launches its Maxwell based GPU lineup, but one can clearly see that architecture is set to last two years on GPUs, while it changes every year for mobile SoC Tegra based processors.

Techpowerup has released a new version of its graphics hardware information, diagnostic and monitoring utility, GPU-Z 0.7.2. The new version fixes some bugs adds new languages and most importantly brings support for a couple of new graphics cards including the upcoming Nvidia GTX 760.

Thje full release notes include support for Nvidia GTX 760, Tesla K10 and Nvidia GT 740M (GK208 based) GPUs, AMD's HD 8490, HD 8970M and the HD 7400D as well as support for Intel Haswell HD 4xxx GPUs. The new version also brings die size, transistor count and release date for Haswell GPUs, brings AMD graphics card logo and a few new languages including Greek, Portuguese (Brazil) as well as updated translation for French language.

The only apparent bug was a rare crash that happened during DirectCompute detection that has been fixed in the new version.

Videocardz.com published a full set of details regarding the upcoming Nvidia Geforce GTX 760 graphics cards as well as the launch date that lines up with what we have been hearing from our sources.

While Nvidia still did not send out the final specification sheet according to our sources, the rumored and published specifications as well as the launch date published at Videocardz.com lineup with what most of our sources heard. The new GTX 760 will be based on the same design previously seen on some Nvidia Geforce 600 series graphics cards with the same blower style fan and should replace the GTX 660 Ti.

The card is based on a cut down version of the GK104 GPU, the GK104-225 and packs 1152 CUDA cores, 96 TMUs and 32 ROPs. The reference design will feature 2GB of memory clocked at 1502MHz (6008MHz effective) and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface. The GPU will work at 980MHz base and 1033MHz Boost clocks. The card will need two 6-pin PCI-Express connector and have a 170W TDP.

Earlier rumored specs were a bit higher but considering earlier rumors that partners have been given a green light for custom designs from day one, these do not come as a surprise. Most partners will not bother with the reference design and launch their own custom, factory-overclocked versions.

Videocardz.com also pointed out that this might be the last graphics card in the coming months that will will complete Nvidia's portfolio as Nvidia might be waiting for AMD's move before launching any more graphics cards.

The launch date for the GTX 760 is set for June 25th according to the report and our sources.

We have confirmed that there will be overclocked Geforce GTX 770 and 780 cards and that manufactures are preparing them as we speak.

Since in reality this is just a rebrand of GTX 770 and 680 cards, it was not hard to imagine that this would come about. The 780 is based on Titan GK110 and is a new card, not simply a renamed 600-series part. One can look at it as a slightly de-clocked and more reasonably priced Titan under GTX 780 brand.

The overclocked cards will come shortly after the plain retail version with Nvidia cooler ships out in order to replace the GTX 680 and 670. The GTX 780 ends up significantly faster than the 680 due to its new GK110 chip, while the 770 should end up five to seven percent more expensive than current GTX 680. We expect to see first of these cards in the second half of June, but we expect to see announcements around Computex, in case Nvidia gives them a PR blessing.

Overclocked cards will gain a nice performance boost, but nothing spectacular as you might imagine as even the 780 card based on the Titan GK110 core ends up just slightly faster than 680. At this time we don’t have an exact number. We are hearing that custom coolers and custom frequencies should appear on these cards but we don’t have any specifics yet.